Breathtaking Sergei Polunin… and his distant cousin

If you’re a ballet peep, it’s highly likely that you, along with 9.9 million other people, have seen ballet dancer Sergei Polunin’s breathtaking performance in Hozier’s now iconic “Take Me to Church.” If you haven’t yet seen it, wow, are you in for a treat. Choreography by Jade Hale-Christofi, filming by David LaChapelle. Ukrainian-born and … Read more

Giving birth [to a book] on Mother’s Day

It’s minutes before midnight and I’m about to give birth. Well, to a book. But, weirdly, there are correlations: this pain of pushing, pushing, and finally, in this agonizing rush of both relief and loss, it’s out there. OFF BALANCE, my first ballet novel, is out there, in stores. My baby, out in the world. But I didn’t … Read more

Farewell, Maya Plisetskaya

Today the ballet world has lost one of its greatest of greats; Maya Plisetskaya has died at the age of 89 in Munich. One of the Bolshoi’s most famous and iconic prima ballerinas, she served to define Soviet Ballet for a generation, before advancing into choreographing and directing, while still performing onstage into her sixties. Somewhat prophetically, I learned … Read more

Introducing OFF BALANCE

As you might remember, dear reader, I made a vow to myself back in January to make 2015 the year I began self-publishing my completed novels. https://www.theclassicalgirl.com/classical-girls-new-years-resolution/  Spring 2015 was my goal for the first one, and — gulp– here we are. Time for my first baby to take flight. And so, without further ado, here you … Read more

It’s Handel’s Messiah time again

  Handel’s Messiah has “Easter” written all over it for me. It must have been a family thing growing up in a Catholic household, hearing the Hallelujah Chorus blaring from the speakers on Easter morning, a sound as embedded in my memory as the crinkle of the cellophane covering the Easter peeps (that I always … Read more